GeoJournal (2022) 87:1639–1655
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10326-w (0123456789().,-volV)
(0123456789().,-volV)
Smart urban governance: an alternative to technocratic
‘‘smartness’’
Huaxiong Jiang . Stan Geertman . Patrick Witte
Accepted: 24 October 2020 / Published online: 9 November 2020
Ó The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper argues for a specific urban
planning perspective on smart governance that we call
‘‘smart urban governance,’’ which represents a move
away from the technocratic way of governing cities
often found in smart cities. A framework on smart
urban governance is proposed on the basis of three
intertwined key components, namely spatial, institu-
tional, and technological components. To test the
applicability of the framework, we conducted an
international questionnaire survey on smart city pro-
jects. We then identified and discursively analyzed
two smart city projects—Smart Nation Singapore and
Helsinki Smart City—to illustrate how this framework
works in practice. The questionnaire survey revealed
that smart urban governance varies remarkably: As
urban issues differ in different contexts, the gover-
nance modes and relevant ICT functionalities applied
also differ considerably. Moreover, the case analysis
indicates that a focus on substantive urban challenges
helps to define appropriate modes of governance and
develop dedicated technologies that can contribute to
solving specific smart city challenges. The analyses of
both cases highlight the importance of context (cul-
tural, political, economic, etc.) in analyzing interac-
tions between the components. In this, smart urban
H. Jiang (&)
S. Geertman
P. Witte
Faculty of Geosciences, Department of Human
Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University,
Utrecht 3584, CB, The Netherlands
e-mail: h.jiang@uu.nl
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governance promotes a sociotechnical way of govern-
ing cities in the ‘‘smart’’ era by starting with the urban
issue at stake, promoting demand-driven governance
modes, and shaping technological intelligence more
socially, given the specific context.
Keywords Smart cities
Urban challenges
Smart
governance
ICT
Contextualization
Introduction
The pressure of urbanization coupled with lingering
economic instability and global climate change has
created various new challenges for cities, such as
traffic congestion, crime, economic stagnation, popu-
lation segregation and air pollution (Batty et al. 2012;
Hollands 2008). To deal with these urban challenges,
the notion of the smart city has been proposed as a
potential solution. In many countries, smart cities are
developed to increase equitable access to basic urban
services, such as education, healthcare, sanitation,
drinking water, and mobility. Local governments
expect that by employing various smart ICTs, oper-
ational and managerial efficiency, citizen engagement
in service co-production, and quality of life can be
significantly improved. Although the concept of the
smart city is considered to have great potential,
associated governance challenges have prevented
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cities from achieving the expected outcomes (Ruh-
landt 2018). As Barns (2018, p. 6) comments, the
ideals of the smart city in seeking to benefit from
digital services necessitate a ‘‘reinvention of
governance.’’
The recent increase in research into the concept of
smart governance is one such effort seeking to achieve
the better governance of the smart city (Ruhlandt
2018; Webster and Leleux 2018; Scholl and AlAwadhi
2016; Scholl and Scholl 2014). Smart governance
emerges mainly due to the growing role of technology
in the functioning of cities, which has made govern-
mental agencies rethink their roles in such data-rich
cities (Bolı́var and Meijer 2016). Smart governance
can use various smart technologies (e.g., big data,
Internet of Things (IoTs), and Artificial Intelligence
(AI)) to upgrade traditional administrative systems
(e.g., e-government) to the city level by streamlining
city operations, making better decisions, and deliver-
ing improved quality of life (Pereira et al. 2018;
Webster and Leleux 2018).
However, smart governance in practice is strongly
characterized by a supply-oriented, technocratic way
of governing cities (e.g., Marvin et al. 2015). In this
process, much emphasis is put on the role of technol-
ogy in collecting data and producing knowledge to
smarten government operations and automate urban
system functions (Jiang et al. 2020a, b; Verrest and
Pfeffer 2019; Kitchin et al. 2016; Kitchin 2014). Such
an approach focusing on digital and technology-driven
innovation is often considered to be a universal
solution to varied urban issues in different cities
(Verrest and Pfeffer 2019). According to some
authors, technocratic ‘‘smart’’ governance conceals
those urban issues, conflicts, and controversies that
cannot be represented by digital tools and data
analytics (e.g., social discrimination and mental
illness) (Bina et al. 2020; Cardullo and Kitchin
2019; Hashem et al. 2016; Rathore et al. 2016).
Therefore, many authors urge that more transfor-
mative and sociotechnical governance approaches are
needed to transform the current form of smart
governance (Jiang et al. 2019a, b; Dano et al. 2019;
Joss et al. 2019; Webster and Leleux 2018; Ruhlandt
2018). For instance, Meijer and Bolı́var (2016) argue
that smart governance should promote new forms of
human collaboration through the use of ICTs to obtain
better outcomes and more open governance processes.
For them, more emphasis should be put on social
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GeoJournal (2022) 87:1639–1655
inclusion, social capital, and sustainability; thereafter,
we should study smart governance as a complex
process of institutional change and acknowledge the
political nature of appealing visions of sociotechnical
governance. Verrest and Pfeffer (2019, p. 1329)
highlight that there is a failure to consider the ‘‘urban’’
as a response to ‘‘what urban challenges related to
smart cities are and what appropriate [governance]
solutions are.’’ This perspective indicates that we need
to become more aware of how urban problems and
their proposed smart solutions are socially con-
structed. In response to the calls for transformative
‘‘smart’’ governance, some authors argue that we must
start with the ‘‘urban’’ and not with the ‘‘smart,’’
shifting from a technology-pushed to an application-
pulled governance approach, and shaping technolo-
gies socially (Jiang et al. 2020a, b; Tomor et al. 2019;
McFarlane and Söderström 2017; Stratigea et al.
2015).
Based on the above, the aim of this paper is to
present a specific urban planning perspective on smart
governance: smart urban governance. The contribu-
tion of smart urban governance moves away from
technocratic smart governance toward promoting an
urban social process of smart governance innovation.
In this context, Jiang et al. (2019b, p. 247) stress that
real ‘‘smart’’ governance should integrate ‘‘the ‘smart’
from smart governance literature’’ with ‘‘the ‘urban’
from urban governance literature,’’ as a means of
‘‘smartening’’ urban governance and highlighting the
importance of urban dynamics in shaping smart
governance. This paper presents three interconnected
components of smart urban governance, namely the
spatial (substantive urban challenges), institutional
(modes of governance), and technological compo-
nents (technological intelligence). By examining them
and showing how they interact with each other,
mediated by context specificities, it proffers a con-
text-based, sociotechnical response to urban chal-
lenges related to smart cities and opens up new
possibilities for transformative city governance.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 focuses on the theoretical background and
evaluates the dominant perspective on the smart
governance debates. The three abovementioned com-
ponents are discussed in detail in Section 3 and a
context-based, sociotechnical governance approach—
smart urban governance—is framed to connect these
components. Section 4 introduces the research
GeoJournal (2022) 87:1639–1655
methodology. Two sets of empirical analyses are
presented in Section 5 to show the added value of the
framework. Section 6 discusses the findings and their
potential implications, and concludes this paper.
Theoretical background
Smart city: opportunities and challenges still
coexist
It has been over 10 years since the smart city concept
was explicitly advocated by Hollands (2008). In
literature, there are two overarching approaches to
discussing smart cities, namely the technology-driven
approach and the human-driven approach. A recurring
aspect in the definition of a smart city is the use of
ICTs. According to the technology-driven approach,
smart cities focus on the acceptance and use of
technologies, and their integration into the city
infrastructure, to increase efficiency and effectiveness
in the city environment (Greenfield 2013; Batty et al.
2012). Accordingly, policymakers and ICT suppliers
are expected to come together to plan smart cities and
deploy ICT-based solutions (Cardullo and Kitchin
2019; Simonofski et al. 2019; Calzada and Cobo 2015;
Shelton et al. 2015).
In contrast, the human-driven approach highlights
that the use of ICTs by communities must enable them
to participate more fully in so-called knowledge
societies (Barns 2018; Jiang et al. 2020a; Leydesdorff
and Deakin 2011). For instance, Neirotti et al. (2014)
argue that smart cities should take advantage of the
opportunities offered by ICT to involve multi-actor,
multi-sector, and multilevel perspectives and promote
community-based smart city building. Kummitha and
Crutzen (2017) emphasize that smart cities need to
create more avenues for social interactions between
different stakeholders and enhance the skills and
capabilities of local people and communities to benefit
their daily life. In this perspective, smart cities should
be seen from a user-centered view with more emphasis
on citizens and other stakeholders than on the tech-
nology itself.
Based on the differing priorities within smart cities,
Caragliu et al. (2011) stress that a comprehensive
definition of the smart city concept is needed to
incorporate the multiple strands. They consider a city
as smart ‘‘when investments in human and social
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1641
capital and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT)
communication infrastructure fuel sustainable eco-
nomic growth and a high quality of life, with a wise
management of natural resources, through participa-
tory governance’’ (Caragliu et al. 2011, p. 70).
According to this definition, the concept of smart
cities should promote people-centered development,
incorporate ICTs into urban management, and stim-
ulate the design of an effective government that
includes collaborative planning and citizen
participation.
In practice, however, the development of smart
cities is over-reliant on the deployment of ICTs or
technological infrastructures, and neglects social ser-
vices of general interest (Monachesi 2020; Desde-
moustier et al. 2019; Simonofski et al. 2019; Datta
2015). As a consequence, many smart city initiatives
are criticized for their ‘‘self-proclaiming and self-
congratulatory’’ notions of such smartness (Hollands
2008, p. 62). As noted by some scholars, the concept of
smart city is simply used as a business model for large
high-tech companies to market their technology
products and to privatize public space (Kitchin et al.
2016; Marvin et al. 2015). It is seen by some authors as
paving the way for a corporatization of city gover-
nance that largely excludes the interests and contri-
butions of ordinary people (Shelton and Lodato 2019;
Grossi and Pianezzi 2017).
The failure to recognize the value of bottom-up
innovation has increased social inequality (Simonof-
ski et al. 2019; Effing and Groot 2016). Although there
is no doubt that ICTs can help create new knowledge
and discover improved ways of governing cities, ICTs
are just an enabler, not a panacea for all the problems
and issues faced by cities and humankind (Joss et al.
2019; Kummitha and Crutzen 2017). Various services
can be offered to citizens via ICT-augmented govern-
ment systems, but not everyone in the city can benefit
from those services, especially people with a low
socioeconomic status and those who are marginalized
or excluded in some way (e.g., refugees, migrants,
asylum seekers) (Cardullo and Kitchin 2019;
Simonofski et al. 2019; Willis 2017).
As Bolı́var (2018, p. 1) asserts, ‘‘many of the
challenges to be faced by smart cities surpass the
capacities, capabilities, and reaches of their tradi-
tional institutions and their classical processes of
governing.’’ For smart cities to be effective, there is a
need to critically evaluate the present governance of
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smart cities and to promote more transformative
governance approaches (Jiang et al. 2020b; Dano
et al. 2019; Ruhlandt 2018).
Smart governance: a critical review
As a component of smart cities (Caragliu et al. 2011),
the smart governance concept is being increasingly
employed by policymakers and private companies to
create smarter cities by using key terms such as smart
decision-making, smart administration, and smart
collaboration (Ruhlandt 2018; Scholl and Scholl
2014). However, there is no commonly accepted
definition of smart governance. Based on an extensive
literature review, it seems that smart governance can
mean (1) making the right policy choices (cf. Nam
2012), (2) developing innovative governance struc-
tures via ICT (cf. Meijer and Bolı́var 2016), or (3)
governing with a focus on the outcome, that is, dealing
with substantive urban challenges (cf. Jiang et al.
2019b). Elaborating on the concept of smart gover-
nance from these three angles adds to a better
understanding of the concept.
In practice, many authors have demonstrated the
added value of smart governance for smartening a city
and promoting a high quality of life. For instance,
Scholl and AlAwadhi (2016) show that ICT-enabled
governance facilitates collaboration between different
cities to provide smart services that no single munic-
ipality can provide alone. Meijer and Thaens (2018)
assert that smart governance supports the collection of
data to strengthen the governance of urban safety.
More recently, smart governance has been used to
handle the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea by
facilitating proactive information-sharing and
enabling citizens to understand the situation and
follow the newly released safety guidelines (Choi
et al. 2020).
Although smart governance shows great potential
for ‘‘smart’’ city developments, smart governance has
been criticized for its technocratic way of governing
cities (Jiang et al. 2020a, b; Verrest and Pfeffer 2019;
Barns 2018). In this process, governments treat the
smart governance of cities merely as a management
issue that can be dealt with by making use of the power
of data analytics (Krivý 2018; Shelton et al. 2015;
Kitchin 2014). In practice, several examples can be
found of decision-makers in government that perceive
important urban problems as being solvable primarily
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GeoJournal (2022) 87:1639–1655
through the application of technologically derived
knowledge; for instance, by transforming the charac-
teristics of local places (geology and landform) and
human-related variables (gender and religion) into
configurable report tables and graphs (Hashem et al.
2016; Rathore et al. 2016). The assumption underlying
this technocratic approach is that knowledge produced
with the help of technology is considered ‘‘value-free’’
and ‘‘objective,’’ and will unbiasedly help governance.
Furthermore, due to the failure to consider the urban
setting, the place-based knowledge of local people can
hardly be received and reflected in the formulation and
production of policy content (Bina et al. 2020;
Cardullo and Kitchin 2019; Söderström et al. 2014).
In short, technocratic smart governance neglects the
role of contextualization in shaping the governance
process.
In addition, the implementation of smart gover-
nance is often closely related to the ideological nature
of the discourse around neoliberalism, implying its
close association with corporate interests (Jiang et al.
2020a; Sadowski 2020; Barns 2018; Hollands 2015).
According to Springer et al. (2016), neoliberalism in
practice is usually aligned with policies of economic
liberalization, such as privatization, lowering taxes,
free trade, and reductions in government spending and
regulations. As for urban governance and urban
development, neoliberalism implies making the public
sector more efficient through processes of marketiza-
tion and the outsourcing of urban services to private
companies (Jessop 2002). As many smart city initia-
tives show, ideas about urban development are often
closely related to the imaginations and plans of key
private corporations (e.g., IBM’s Smarter Planet and
Cisco’s Smart?Connected Communities) (Wiig
2015). Governments then play an active role in
facilitating the process of designing, creating, and
implementing policies for smart city development
(Hollands 2015). As Luque-Ayala et al. (2016) note,
the implementation of smart governance helps private
corporations to sell their ‘‘smart’’ packages and local
governments to promote their political and social
interests. However, the interests of local people are
usually largely excluded from such governance pro-
cesses (Jiang et al. 2020a; McFarlane and Söderström
2017). Consequently, smart governance in practice
typically presents a situation in which power, wealth,
and business capital play a key role in directing and
GeoJournal (2022) 87:1639–1655
controlling the discourses and practices of smart cities
(Krivý 2018; Kitchin 2014).
Furthermore, in some countries—for example,
China, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia—technocratic
smart governance controversially enhances the author-
itarian and potentially oppressive systems of gover-
nance (Keegan 2020; Anderlini 2019; Fountain 2001;
Pali and Schuilenburg 2019). For instance, in China
the governance-oriented City Brain project in Hang-
zhou employs advanced video monitoring, facial
recognition systems, and predictive policing to mon-
itor, anticipate, and influence the behavior of individ-
uals and certain groups (Beall 2018; The Trend Letter
2017). Although it significantly enhances the govern-
ing capabilities of Hangzhou city government, accord-
ing to some authors, the networks and techniques of
surveillance and control largely acted as generators of
feelings of discomfort and uneasiness in citizens
(Beall 2018) and consequently reduces their mental
health and wellbeing (Whittaker 2019; Pali and
Schuilenburg 2019). Similarly, in other projects like
Songdo Ubiquitous City, South Korea, and Masdar
City in the United Arab Emirates, actions taken by
governments, businesses, and other organizations as a
result of big data analytics produce privacy and
security concerns (Kuecker and Hartley 2020; Angeli-
dou 2017).
Thus, rather than offering innovative and effective
approaches for dealing with various urban problems,
the shortfalls of present-day smart governance have
created extra challenges for smart city developments.
Several authors argue that smart governance has
focused too much on the technical, engineering, and
economic dimensions, while there is a lack of
consideration for the role of urban social processes
in shaping and configuring its meaning in practice
(Faraji et al. 2019; Krivý 2018; Marvin et al. 2015;
Söderström et al. 2014). Smart governance largely
leaves the smart to the powerful (government and
corporate elites) rather than foregrounding smart in the
lifeworld of different stakeholders (especially citi-
zens) in the city (Datta 2015). The ‘‘place-based,
experiential’’ knowledge generated through the
wishes, demands, requirements, and conditions of
ordinary people—especially the urban poor and the
marginalized—is often ignored (McFarlane and
Söderström 2017, p. 318). In addition, the technocratic
way of governing cities can hardly take into account
the ways in which residents learn what really matters
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1643
in their urban environment and how that might be
supported. The outcome of technocratic smart gover-
nance may be highly unequal in urban societies,
characterized by unequal power relations, social
exclusion, and unbalanced distributions of costs and
benefits (Kitchin et al. 2016). Therefore, for transfor-
mative smart governance, we must better understand
the reasons for the acceptance or rejection of a
technology as an appropriate solution for specific
urban problems (Jiang et al. 2020a, b; Tomor et al.
2019; Verrest and Pfeffer 2019; Joss et al. 2019;
Ruhlandt 2018).
Smart urban governance: three interrelated
components
In line with the foregoing, in this section we further
elaborate upon smart urban governance by identifying
its three key components—namely its spatial, institu-
tional, and technological components—and their
interrelationships.
Spatial component: urban challenges
When smart governance is concerned with urban
space, it considers this foremost as the spatial carrier
of governance objects (Jiang et al. 2019b). However,
from a smart urban governance perspective, the urban
space constitutes the diversity of urban challenges that
ask for governance action. It should be noted that
urban studies have a long tradition of critically
examining the interface between urban challenges
and digital technologies (Graham and Marvin 2002).
For instance, the introduction of a technological
innovation often originates from handling urgent
urban challenges like mobility congestion or social
segregation issues (Vonk 2006). Consequently, in
smart urban governance, narratives and practices
around the notion of smartness should focus not
merely on the problem-solving powers of big data, city
sensors, and intelligent infrastructure, but primarily on
the role of urban challenges in stipulating the
functional support of technological innovations (Jiang
et al. 2020b). In that, a prime focus on the pressing
urban challenges can enhance the capabilities of ICT
to contribute to the problem-solving nature of the
governance object.
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In accordance with the concept of ‘‘sustainability,’’
Fig. 1 illustrates the associated main urban challenges,
namely ‘‘to grow the economy, distribute the growth
fairly, and in the process not degrade the ecosystem’’
(Campbell 1996, p. 3). It points out the main urban
challenges faced by contemporary cities and indicates
the targets that smart rationalities and techniques
should meet. In particular, the trade-offs between the
sustainability goals can be considered a huge urban
challenge. As such, we believe that the model of
economic, social, and ecological claims and the trade-
offs between them to arrive at ‘‘sustainability’’ is in
itself of value to frame the nature of urban challenges;
it thus constitutes the ‘‘spatial’’ component of our
concept of smart urban governance.
Institutional component: modes of governance
Smart urban governance also needs input and contri-
butions from various groups and organizations. To
successfully deal with pressing urban challenges,
actors from the state, market, and/or civil society have
to collaborate in innovative ways, or ‘‘modes of
governance’’ (Driessen et al. 2012). This differs
sharply from the notion of technocratic smart gover-
nance, which emphasizes either the government as the
prime initiator of innovative solutions, or the private
sector as the provider of ICT-based smart solutions.
The literature discusses distinct structures of gov-
ernance. However, each mode of governance implies
the involvement, in some form, of the three mentioned
Social justice
Spatial
component
Economy Environment
Fig. 1 Spatial component—urban challenges (based on Camp-
bell 1996)
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GeoJournal (2022) 87:1639–1655
types of actors (Driessen et al. 2012). Based on the
degree of power sharing between these actors in the
decision-making process, the structure of governance
can be classified as either authoritative, competitive,
or cooperative (Roberts 2000). Figure 2 integrates the
abovementioned actors and their collaboration, which
constitutes the institutional component of smart urban
governance. The basic idea of this triangle is that the
institutional component within smart urban gover-
nance is composed of the interactions between actors
from the state, market, and/or civil society to arrive at
well-intended solutions.
Technological component: functional intelligence
The previous subsections show that smart urban
governance should start from urban challenges and
be attuned to the wider group of involved urban actors.
As for the role of technology in smart urban gover-
nance, it means that technological innovation should
satisfy the real needs of the actors within governance
practices to be able to deal with pressing urban
challenges (Jiang et al. 2019a, 2020a, b; Meijer and
Thaens 2018).
In technological innovation studies, each techno-
logical artifact has different meanings and interpreta-
tions for various actors. Thus, smart urban governance
should build upon the knowledge, ideas, and opinions
of different actors to create innovative technological
functions that can satisfy their real needs. To do so, in
smart urban governance the technological component
is envisioned by its functional intelligence. Based on
State
Institutional
component
Market Civil society
Fig. 2 Institutional component: modes of governance
GeoJournal (2022) 87:1639–1655
Geertman (2014) and Vonk (2006), these information-
handling capabilities of technologies can be catego-
rized into three groups: ‘‘informing ICT,’’ ‘‘commu-
nicating ICT,’’ and ‘‘analyzing and designing ICT.’’
The first capability—informing ICT—is intended to
make governance-related knowledge and information
accessible and interpretable from an access point or
sender toward a user. The second—communicating
ICT—is aimed at facilitating communication and
discussion processes between those involved in the
governance process by supporting flows of informa-
tion between them (Pelzer 2015). And the third
capability—analyzing and designing ICT—is
intended to facilitate the advanced processing of data
to detect urban patterns and the underlying processes,
in order to facilitate the perception, creation, and
presentation of design ideas (Geertman 2014). These
distinctive functional intelligences provide different
urban actors with the proper support capabilities to
deal with the diversity of urban challenges. For
instance, the communicating capability of ICT can
help build collaborative forms of decision-making,
while the analyzing capability of ICT can help users to
process data and facilitate the simulation of potential
solutions to urban problems. The functional intelli-
gence represents the ‘‘technological’’ component of
smart urban governance and is illustrated in Fig. 3.
A context-based, sociotechnical governance
approach
The three abovementioned components can be inte-
grated into a conceptual framework for smart urban
governance (Fig. 4). This framework indicates how
the three interrelated components can achieve a
balanced governance structure. The three thicker
arrows show the interrelationships between the spatial,
institutional, and technological components. The fig-
ure thus represents a state of co-evolution whereby one
component interacts closely with the others and in
which changes in one component will have conse-
quences for the others. These interactions are crucial
to avoid the previously mentioned technocratic way of
governing cities and form the sociotechnical response
to smartening city governance.
In addition, smart urban governance can only
function properly when it is put into the specific
socio-spatial context of a city (Geertman 2006; Jiang
et al. 2019b). According to Jiang et al. (2020a), five
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1645
Informing
Technological
component
Analyzing & Designing Communicating
Fig. 3 Technological component: functional intelligence
key contextual factors can be identified from the smart
city governance literature, that is, economic, political,
cultural, and technological factors and the urban issue
itself. Unlike previous smart governance approaches,
this smart urban governance framework underlines the
importance of these local urban contextual character-
istics that should therefore be explicitly taken into
consideration.
Smart urban governance strives to create a context-
focused, sociotechnical governance approach to coor-
dinate and steer the objectives, actors, and artifacts,
namely urban challenges, institutional modes of
governance, and technological intelligence. It stresses
that smart urban governance departs from the urban
challenges (=goal) and from that identifies the appro-
priate modes of governance and technologies
(=means), given the context in which it is embedded.
Thus, the smartness of smart urban governance refers
to the potential of its components’ interactions, in a
specific context, to increase our capacity to handle
urban challenges, enhance stakeholders’ capabilities
for collaboration, and improve technology’s useful-
ness, all aimed at achieving smart city development. In
the following sections, with the help of an interna-
tional questionnaire survey and two illustrative cases
collected via index systems, we demonstrate the added
value of this framework in practice.
Methodology
We first discuss how we conducted the questionnaire
survey, which was used to show the applicability of the
smart urban governance framework. We then explain
how we selected the two illustrative cases to
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Fig. 4 Smart urban
governance framework
Economy
State
Institutional
component
Market
demonstrate the detailed working mechanisms of the
framework.
Survey on smart city projects worldwide
In May–July 2019, we sent a questionnaire to the
Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management
(CUPUM) research community via electronic and
regular mailing lists. About 1300 people worldwide
were invited to fill in the questionnaire. The reason for
selecting the CUPUM community as respondents was
that: (1) CUPUM is a major international academic
conference that provides an advanced platform for the
dissemination of information and knowledge on the
science and technology of big data, smart cities, and
smart urban futures (Geertman et al. 2019); and (2)
participants of CUPUM (mainly scholars, technolo-
gists, and doctoral students) possess comprehensive
knowledge and skills and rich experiences related to
ICT application in city governance and planning.
Thus, they offered a highly professional overview of
smart urban governance in the context of smart cities.
Of the approximately 1300 questionnaires sent out,
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GeoJournal (2022) 87:1639–1655
Social justice
Spatial
component
Environment
Informing
Socio-spatial
context
Technological
component
Civil society Analyzing & Designing Communicating
268 were completed by respondents (response rate of
just over 20%). Of these completed questionnaires,
175 had been filled out by respondents who had been
professionally involved in smart city projects. We
therefore used their questionnaires in our analysis.
The questionnaire had two parts. The first part
gathered basic data on the (anonymous) participants,
such as gender, age, profession, origin, and expertise
in the use of ICT. Respondents were also asked about
their expertise and personal experiences with smart
city projects. The second part gathered in-depth
information about the different features of the frame-
work (e.g., context, urban problems, governance
modes, types of technologies) for smart urban gover-
nance in practice.1 We carried out statistical analysis
of the statements relevant to this study to demonstrate
the applicability of the smart urban governance
framework in a wide variety of smart city cases.
1
See appendix for Supplementary Material I on detailed
information of the statements.
GeoJournal (2022) 87:1639–1655
Stepping into two illustrative cases
Using the data obtained through the questionnaire, we
focus on two smart city projects—Smart Nation
Singapore and Helsinki Smart City—to illustrate the
detailed working mechanisms of the framework. The
selection of these two case studies was based on an
extensive review of key international literature and of
smart city projects worldwide.2 Two sets of data—
policy documents and data related to smart city
practices—were gathered and studied to examine the
governance processes of the two cases. First, online
search engines were used to collect policy-related
documents based on keywords (e.g., ‘‘Singapore
Smart Nation’’ and ‘‘Helsinki Smart City’’). A snow-
ball sampling method enabled the tracking and
collecting of other potentially relevant policy docu-
ments. Second, local government portals and aca-
demic search engines were used to gather data related
to these smart city practices. The practice-related data
were mainly derived from academic literature, gov-
ernmental portals, social media blogs, and digital
newspaper archives.
Discourse analysis—which reveals the meaning of
texts and other forms of communication in their social
and institutional contexts—was applied to investigate
the various features and their significance for smart
urban governance in both cases. The present research
employed two key dimensions of discourse analysis
developed by Fairclough (1995). First, the units of
analysis of a text analysis are empirical evidence of the
latent meaning found in the discourse analysis.
Therefore, text analysis was used to determine the
features of the smart urban governance framework.
Second, social practice requires a study of discourses
in relation to wider power structures and social and
cultural contexts. Based on the discursive analysis of
each case, we compared the similarities and differ-
ences between smart urban governance in these two
projects.
Analysis guidelines
Following the conceptual framework, the analysis (1)
focused on the urgent urban issues facing cities; (2)
examined how the characteristics of the urban issue
2
See appendix for Supplementary Material II on literature
review and selected smart projects.
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
1647
influence or define the choice of a specific mode of
governance; (3) explored how the urban issue and the
selected governance mode together determine the
choice of functional intelligence (ICT functionality);
and (4) enquired into the role of contextual factors in
mediating the interactions of the components of smart
urban governance. Below we demonstrate how the
smart urban governance framework can contribute to
analyzing a context-focused, sociotechnical way of
governing cities.
Smart urban governance in practice
In this section, the results obtained via the question-
naire survey are presented to show the applicability of
the smart urban governance framework in a wider
range of smart city cases. This is followed by two
illustrative smart city cases, which show the detailed
working mechanisms of the framework.
Applicability of smart urban governance in wider
contexts
Concerning geographical origin, most of the respon-
dents (53%) came from China; the others came from
Europe (15.4%), Asia (excluding China) (14.2%),
Oceania (5.1%), South America (5.1%), North Amer-
ica (5.1%), and Africa (2.3%). This indicates the
variety of the socio-spatial contexts in which smart
urban governance is embedded.
In terms of types of urban issues handled, the
majority of issues (61.2%) were mixed urban issues
(combinations of either economic, social, or environ-
mental issues), while 24.6% of the projects were
related to only economic issues, 8.5% to only social
issues, and 5.7% to only environmental issues.
To handle these issues, various modes of gover-
nance were applied: 12.6% of the projects adopted a
centralized mode of governance, 28% a decentralized
mode of governance, 8% public–private governance,
44.6% an interactive mode of governance, and 6.9%
self-governance. The frequency (absolute number) of
use of each governance mode in handling the different
types of urban issues (see Jiang et al. 2020c) shows
that centralized and decentralized governance were
mainly employed to solve economic issues (mostly
transportation and mobility), while the other gover-
nance modes were typically used to solve mixed urban
123
1648
issues. No governance modes were created to exclu-
sively handle either social (e.g., housing) or environ-
mental issues.
Furthermore, in terms of types of ICT applied to
support governance processes and handle urban issues,
2.8% of the projects used only informing ICT, 1.7%
only communicating ICT, and 48% only analyzing and
designing ICT; 47% adopted hybrid ICT tools (com-
binations of either informing, communicating or
analyzing and designing ICT). We also calculated
the frequency (absolute number) of the use of each
type of ICT in supporting governance processes and
handling urban issues (see Jiang et al. 2020c). First,
concerning the linkages between ICT and governance
processes, analyzing and designing ICT was mainly
used to support decentralized and interactive gover-
nance modes, whereas informing ICT and communi-
cating ICT were primarily applied to improve
interactive governance modes; few ICT tools were
adopted to support public–private governance and
self-governance. Second, concerning the linkages
between ICT and urban issues, analyzing and design-
ing ICT was typically used to handle mixed urban
issues, while informing ICT and communicating ICT
were applied to handle economic issues (mainly
transportation and mobility issues); few ICT tools
were exclusively used to handle either social or
environmental issues.
The questionnaire revealed that smart urban gov-
ernance varies significantly in different socio-spatial
contexts. As urban issues differ in different countries,
the modes of governance and types of technologies
applied also differ. This implies that smart urban
governance contextualizes itself and forms a
sociotechnical response to urban challenges in the
context of smart cities. In the next subsections, we
discuss two illustrative cases to show how this
context-based, sociotechnical way of governing cities
(smart urban governance) works in practice.
Two illustrative cases
Smart Nation Singapore
Urban issues In recent decades, Singapore’s main
urban issues (high energy consumption; insufficient
transportation infrastructure and solid waste manage-
ment; inadequate housing; high unemployment; and
environmental vulnerabilities) have been exacerbated
123
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GeoJournal (2022) 87:1639–1655
by rapid urbanization, increasing urban density, and
the high demands of urban environments. More recent
changing structures of international competitiveness,
along with Singapore’s increasing burdens of an
ageing population, a widening income gap, and
declining productivity, further magnify the negative
impact on the city’s sustainable development (Bhas-
karan 2018). Against this background, the Smart
Nation project was launched by the government as a
nationwide effort to take advantage of the recent
emergence of smart ICTs (e.g., immersive media, AI,
IoT, and robotics) to handle these sustainability
challenges (Tan and Zhou 2018).
Governance choice Influenced by Singapore’s mas-
sive urban issues, along with its top-down institutions
and dominant government-led approaches (Ho 2017),
the government adopted a ‘‘whole-of-government’’
centralized approach to govern the Smart Nation
initiative at the national scale (Khern 2019). Two key
government agencies—Smart Nation and Digital
Government Group (SNDGG) and Government Tech-
nology Agency (GovTech)—placed under the Prime
Minister’s Office (PMO) were established in 2017 as
the central governing body for the Smart Nation
initiative. The position of Singapore as a city-state
with limited natural and social resources requires it to
stimulate innovative advances (e.g., productivity
improvement and knowledge economy) and create
successful transitions to a more sustainable and
resilient future (Cavada et al. 2019; Hoe 2016). As
Chesbrough (2006) argues, the nature and character-
istics of innovative activities call for the involvement
of multiple stakeholders to jointly test, develop, and
create smart solutions. Accordingly, the focal point of
urban governance in Singapore has also witnessed the
emergence of government-led participatory and col-
laborative approaches to solve its complex and
intertwined urban problems (Tan and Zhou 2018).
Selection of ICT functionality To support the whole-
of-government approach and handle service-relevant
issues, the abovementioned ‘‘informing’’ functionality
was initially created and applied to facilitate the
governing of the Smart Nation initiative. For instance,
web-based ICTs were used to radically overhaul the
city-state’s existing government systems and to build a
comprehensive, digital government administration
platform—Core Operations, Development Environ-
ment, and eXchange (CODEX)—to deal with the
GeoJournal (2022) 87:1639–1655
segmented e-citizen services and applications. A
transformative open government data portal (data.
gov.sg) was then launched to provide one-stop access
to the government’s publicly available datasets, cov-
ering health, transportation, education, housing, the
environment, etc. Various communicating ICTs such
as online platforms and networks were also developed
by government-linked companies to build a system of
mechanisms for collaborative innovation. The best
illustration of this government-led, ICT-enabled col-
laboration is the development of startup companies
and innovations in technology-based services and
products. For instance, AI Singapore—an online
innovation platform aiming to engage all Singapore-
based ecosystems of AI startups, AI producers, and
research institutions—was established by a govern-
ment-wide partnership comprising the SNDGG,
National Research Foundation, Integrated Health
Information Systems, etc.3 Through crowdsourcing,
hackathons, and living labs, it supports new startup
companies and/or develops technology-based solu-
tions to address Singapore’s urban problems.
The government’s efforts in recent decades to
improve Singaporeans’ digital literacy and technology
skills have enabled ordinary people to utilize neigh-
borhood forums, blogs, and websites to improve the
way they live, work, and play (Cavada et al. 2019). For
instance, a government-facilitated crowdsourcing por-
tal ‘‘eCitizen Ideas’’ allows citizens to share or
contribute their opinions, suggestions, and ideas
related to daily issues faced by the public, often
through campaigns, competitions, and hackathons
organized by various government agencies (Woo
2017). Also, collaborations between elderly people
and state-owned companies have facilitated the devel-
opment of the Smart Elderly Alert System, which
tracks the movement and activities of the elderly and
enables them to live independently. In addition, social
media like Twitter and Facebook are also used by
innovation enthusiasts to engage in some of the
aforementioned innovation activities (e.g., co-produc-
tion of healthcare services), or curate events and host
discussions around new technologies such as block-
chains, MedTech, and IoT (Khern 2019).
3
https://www.aisingapore.org/.
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
1649
Role of contextual factors Looking at the interac-
tions of urban issues, governance modes, and ICT
functionality in Singapore, we also see the importance
of the embedded context (e.g., political institutions,
resource constraints, and technological basis) in
analyzing the development, implementation, and
effects of smart urban governance. For instance,
influenced by Singapore’s massive urban issues and
its top-down political tradition, a whole-of-govern-
ment approach was initially applied to enhance the
participatory efforts of various government agencies
and enable data to be exploited across individual,
organizational, and national boundaries. Then, the
position of Singapore as a city-state with limited
resources led to more collaborative approaches aimed
at mobilizing the strength of the whole of Singapore to
address its issues. However, due to the government’s
special relationship with the consortium (i.e. govern-
ment-linked companies), the government and its agent
companies still have a role within the collaboration
process (Cavada et al. 2019). Influenced by this, ICTs
and web-based telecommunication technologies were
used either to improve the government’s capabilities
to deliver efficient and effective services, or to make
use of the knowledge and insight of local people to
boost urban innovations and improve residents’ qual-
ity of life. This thus reflects a combination of more
state-led, informing intelligence and more collabora-
tive governance approaches in Singapore.
Helsinki smart city
Urban issues Helsinki’s rapid urbanization over the
past 20 years has led to a range of urban issues that
could restrict its ability to create a sustainable future.
Population growth driven by migration has greatly
increased the demand for public services, such as
energy provision, transportation infrastructure, hous-
ing, and employment. In addition, localized environ-
mental problems such as indoor air pollution, vehicle
emissions, and the pollution of lakes and coastal areas
threaten the living conditions of Helsinki’s residents.
Against this background, in 2014 the Helsinki gov-
ernment initiated the Helsinki Smart City program to
handle these sustainability challenges (Research and
Innovation Strategy for Regional Development
2014–2020, updated by Helsinki Smart Region—
Strategy Update 2018–2020 in 2017). As Laakso
(2017) illustrates, the overall purpose of Helsinki’s
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1650 GeoJournal (2022) 87:1639–1655

transition toward a smarter city is to create new collective concern. Influenced by this, integrating
business models, improve residents’ quality of life, digitally assisted tools with face-to-face interaction
and make Helsinki more sustainable and resilient. creates self-organized innovation spaces that allow
local residents to collaborate at the same level as
Governance choice According to Anttiroiko (2016),
experts (researchers) to discuss and make community-
Helsinki—Finland’s capital city—is characterized by
based plans. An example of this is the Aalto Built
its democratic tradition and bottom-up institutions and
Environment Lab.4 Facilitated by large projection
decision-making processes. Influenced by this, smart
displays and support equipment, such as microphones
urban governance in Helsinki has been approached,
and cameras, planning experts from Aalto University
since its inception, from an integrative perspective on
work and communicate collaboratively with broader
urban problems, using triple helix collaborations
community stakeholders (e.g., city planners, politi-
(Hämäläinen 2020). An ideal illustration of Helsinki’s
cians, residents, and landowners). By further using
smart urban governance is the Smart Kalasatama
ICT-enabled data analytics and visualizations to
project initiated by Helsinki City Council in 2013 to
present the issues of concern, discussions between
become a co-created model district for smart living
engaged stakeholders co-produce a large variety of
(e.g., unique housing, accessible and flexible living,
ideas, suggestions, and knowledge as the foundation
sports, recreation, greenery). Considering city resi-
for planning their community. According to Ant-
dents both as the most precious resources and the
tiroiko (2016), the governance of Helsinki Smart City
beneficial owners, the Smart Kalasatama project itself
is largely built on ICT-enabled, user-oriented ‘‘plat-
acts as the test and experimentation environment for
formization’’ to mobilize public data and local
different stakeholders (mainly enterprises, urban
knowledge and provide tailored services and
planners, local citizens, and students) to co-create
solutions.
the district.
Role of contextual factors Helsinki’s democratic
Selection of ICT functionality To support Helsinki’s
culture and active civil society, along with its bottom-
smart urban collaboration, practices showed that right
up decision-making process, have enabled the munic-
from the beginning, the Helsinki government has used
ipal government to tackle its sustainability challenges
an integrative innovation platform—Forum Virium
based on wider collaboration between governments,
Helsinki—to co-produce the Helsinki Smart City with
businesses, citizens, and research institutions. In such
universities, companies, and local citizens. The plat-
an environment, civic engagement and collaboration
form serves a wide range of roles (e.g., innovation
are often considered the key features of Helsinki’s
communities, growth services, participatory and col-
smart city development. Many solutions to Helsinki’s
laborative urban design, and investment). Since its
urban challenges have been the result of community-
establishment in the mid-2000s, Forum Virium
based collaborations between citizens, businesses, and
Helsinki has advanced and witnessed a booming
local government, rather than being produced in a top-
growth of living labs, crowdsourcing, open data, urban
down bureaucratic way. Various smart technologies
services, and mobile apps. For instance, Helsinki
(e.g., living labs, platforms, and service- and user-
Living Lab was established and is coordinated by
oriented apps) have been developed to engage differ-
Forum Virium Helsinki to engage interested groups
ent stakeholders, especially citizens, to participate in
and absorb their new ideas and innovative concepts for
the co-production of services that meet their real
service innovation. By using distributed user inter-
needs. Consequently, smart urban governance in
faces on the spot or via the web-based platforms,
Helsinki shows how a people-centered issue (smart
interested groups can participate in various co-pro-
living) provides a co-innovative setting in which
duction and/or co-creation activities, such as healthy
diverse stakeholders jointly test and create smart
neighborhoods, mobile services tests, waste collection
solutions through online and offline platforms (Ant-
systems, and future schools.
tiroiko 2016).
The applied participatory and citizen-based gover-
nance not only enhanced the capabilities of Helsinki to
provide functional services, but also fostered social
4
responsibility for tackling urban issues that are of https://www.aalto.fi/en/aalto-built-environment-laboratory.

123

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GeoJournal (2022) 87:1639–1655
Comparison and reflection
The analysis first indicates that, as urban issues differ
in Singapore and Helsinki, the appropriate governance
modes and relevant ICT functionalities applied also
differ. As mentioned, ‘‘smart nation’’ Singapore
endeavors to handle both strategic issues that have a
long-term impact on survival, and daily issues that
influence the quality of life (Hoe 2016). Because of
this, it adopted a combination of whole-of-govern-
ment, centralized, and more collaborative approaches.
As for the role of technological intelligence, informing
and communicating ICTs are developed and imple-
mented to either deliver public services or facilitate
collaborative activities (e.g., product and service
innovation). In contrast, ‘‘co-created smart’’ Helsinki
shows more concern about the living environment and
the level of wellbeing offered to its inhabitants.
Therefore, more citizen-centric, integrated, and ICT-
facilitated flat structures were selected to govern the
Helsinki Smart City project. In terms of the role of
technologies, integrative functionalities (informing,
communicating, and/or analyzing and designing)
allow decision-makers to derive valuable insights into
issues, something that previously was not possible. In
addition, these technologies greatly facilitate open
innovation, experimentation, and citizen engagement
in the co-creation and co-production of urban services
and urban living.
Second, the analysis also shows the importance of
the specific context (cultural, political, economic, etc.)
in influencing the choices both within each component
and in their interaction, resulting in distinct forms of
smart urban governance. In Singapore, massive urban
issues along with top-down institutions put the gov-
ernment at the center of efforts to develop and pilot
government-led, informative platforms seeking smart
solutions. The position of Singapore as a city-state
with limited natural and social resources and its efforts
to equip people with digital skills, have also created
ICT-facilitated, city-wide collaborations with busi-
nesses, interested citizens, and knowledge institutes.
Taken together, smart urban governance in Singapore
indicates the nationwide and whole-of-government
effort along with the increased state-citizen engage-
ment to reshape Singapore’s policy processes and
transform the living environments of Singaporeans
(Hoe 2016). In Helsinki, influenced by Finland’s
democratic tradition, innovation culture, and strong
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
1651
technological basis, triple helix collaborations and
integrative innovation platforms were developed to
handle major issues and problems confronting resi-
dents’ everyday lives. As a result, smart urban
governance in Helsinki suggests an extended public-
sector innovation, with technologically enabled plat-
forms serving to enhance the reach and efficacy of co-
creation and co-production mechanisms. According to
Zhou (2017), context is vital since the environment in
which a typical governance is embedded limits,
confines, or shapes the development and implementa-
tion of that governance approach. Stakeholders should
therefore understand that urban processes are always
interlinked and intertwined, and that smart governance
mechanisms ought to be contextualized and compre-
hended as compound, synthesized actions.
Third, the analysis shows that the smart urban
governance framework (Fig. 4) provides an effective
analytical method to decide how to govern cities in the
smart era. Although Singapore and Helsinki are
confronted with different urban issues and are embed-
ded in different urban contexts, both have obtained
positive outcomes and needed improvements in terms
of economic development, e-government innovation,
public service delivery, quality of life, etc. (Monachesi
2020; Calder 2016). The key to this is that by adopting
a forward-looking and problem-oriented strategy, both
highlight that the development of modes of gover-
nance and relevant ICT functionality should accord
with the perceived economic, social, and/or environ-
mental urban challenges. In addition, the framework
explicitly proposes analyses of both the choice of each
component and the interactions of the components in a
larger urban context. By doing so, smart urban
governance moves away from a simple technology-
based policy intervention toward a more compound
and contextualized comprehension of how interactions
of the urban issues, urban actors, and urban technolo-
gies engage in generating smart solutions and of their
impacts on contemporary urban life.
Conclusions
We have argued for a specific urban planning
perspective on smart governance (i.e., smart urban
governance) that aims to overcome the deficiencies of
the present technocratic way of governing smart cities.
The smart urban governance framework departs from
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1652
pressing urban challenges, selects appropriate modes
of governance, and advocates the proper application of
the technology to the problem at hand and the needs of
users within the particularities of the socio-spatial
context. Such a governance approach integrates tech-
nology into the urban setting and facilitates an
interactive relation between the urban dynamics and
technology-facilitated governance. It implies that the
smartness of smart urban governance is not just
derived from its power to implement and reconfig-
ure technology, but also relies heavily on its ability to
respond to the changing urban setting and create new
sets of social relations.
The questionnaire on smart city projects worldwide
revealed that smart urban governance varies remark-
ably in different socio-spatial contexts. As urban
issues differ in different countries, the governance
modes and relevant ICT functionalities being applied
also differ. The case studies of Singapore and Helsinki
showed that taking the urban challenges as a starting
point helps to define appropriate governance structures
and to develop dedicated technologies that contribute
to the successful governance of these smart cities. In
general, this asks for the close attunement of the
particular spatial, institutional, and technological
components to the context at hand. In terms of
transforming the role of technology in current smart
cities, it implies that the technology should be closely
embedded in the appropriate mode of governance and
be closely related to the substantive urban problems at
hand. Both empirical analyses highlight the impor-
tance of the specific context (cultural, political,
economic, etc.) in analyzing the interactions between
the components of and/or the development of smart
urban governance.
To sum up, this paper highlights that smart urban
governance promotes a context-focused, sociotechni-
cal way of governing cities in the smart era. More
specifically, smart urban governance sees the defini-
tion of urban issues (i.e. economic, social, and
environmental) as perceived and constructed through
interplays between the state, market, and/or civil
society. In terms of innovations of modes of gover-
nance, smart urban governance especially explores the
role of situated agents and their dedication to offering
the types of place-based knowledge needed for well-
intended policies. For a convincing supportive role of
technological intelligence, multiple functions of ICT
(i.e. informing, communicating, and analyzing and
123
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GeoJournal (2022) 87:1639–1655
designing) are required to support governance pro-
cesses and handle the perceived urban problems in an
appropriate way. Finally, we explicitly acknowledge
the decisive role of context in analyzing the creation,
application, and impacts of smart urban governance.
We therefore propose smart urban governance as a
sociotechnical way of governing cities in the smart era
by starting with the urban issue at stake, promoting
demand-driven governance modes, and shaping tech-
nological intelligence more socially, given the specific
context.
Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the
anonymous reviewers of the journal for their helpful suggestions
to improve this paper.
Funding Financial supports from the China Scholarship
Committee (Grant No. 20160601386) are gratefully
acknowledged.
Complaince with ethical standards
Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no
conflict of interest.
Informed consent This article does not contain any studies
involving human participants performed by any of the authors.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Com-
mons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use,
sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any med-
ium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the
original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative
Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The
images or other third party material in this article are included in
the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated
otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your
intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds
the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly
from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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